darcshadow

So say 1.5 hours, what do you pay yourself per hour? $50? Then you're looking at $75 in time plus cost of mirror and vinyl.

Be aware though, white on white is very hard to see, especially with application over it. I think you're over thinking it.

Cutting fine detail is difficult even on high end cutters, the MH is the lowest of the bunch so getting anything too small on it may not be possible. Be sure you have your blade depth set correctly, dial in your offset, and if your software supports it, add a bit of overcut, 1-2mm should be enough.

Yeah, I just make them as part of the design. I don't use VM though, and someone that does may have a better way to do it in VM.

You could just make your own registration marks. I use a simple diamond.

I do not use SCAL so I have to ask, why? It would seem to me, if the design fits on the matt it'll cut just fine on the cutter. I am making the assumption that SCAL only cuts the design and doesn't "cut" the entire matt. Ie, if you put something at the bottom of the matt and it is only a few inches tall, when it is cut the top of the design will be at the edge of your vinyl.

Layering the black and blue over the green is much easier than trying to cut an outline and get it to line up perfect.

Yes, you can use as many different cut programs as you want. If you want to cut with SB one time and VM the next that will work just fine. As slice suggests though, when working in SB, I'd suggest saving off your files as EPS that way you can open them in virtually any other cutting program in the future.

This is what it looks like when I open it with Inkscape, is that correct? You are going to be cutting this, correct? If so there are a few things I'd suggest changing to make laying easier. First the green outline around the B. Rather than an outline make it a solid background, minus the white holes. Once you've done this, you can delete the green portions inside the lightning bolt. Next you'll need to adjust the blue portion to leave a gap between the B so that the green will show through. Here is how I would configure the file for cutting. Also, FYI, your green outlines were strokes and as such would not cut how the look. Strokes are a single line, in order for them to cut as they look you need to convert the stroke to a path. lastly, I would also recommend a green outline for the white cutouts of the B. To me it just doesn't look right with green online every place else. BclawZ.eps

You can also give Inkscape a try. It's a free vector program that is quite powerful considering it is free.

Yeah, you can use as many different cutting programs as you want. The cutter doesn't care.

651 is a calendared vinyl and will shrink more so than cast (751, 951). I'm not familiar with VinylMaster but it sounds like you have the tools you need with the outline module. My guess is your image is a group, you'll need to ungroup it and break out individual colors then select each section one at a time to do the outline thing. If you could post the file you're having issues with people might be able to give you a more step by step instruction set.

Way WAY to much blade sticking out. MZ Skeeter has posted dozens of times the correct way to set the blade depth, do a search for it and follow her instructions.

In most cases, thinner vinyl is typically better.

I've not dealt with magnets, but would putting the vinyl on the table upside down and applying the magnet to the vinyl be a possible option? I know putting app tape on that way, put the app tape on the table and lay the vinyl onto the tape, can be quite a bit easier some times.

The Kill Switch as you call it is nothing more than an end stop for the X-axis. The printer moves till it hits it and then it knows it's location. I agree it wouldn't have taken much to have the X end stop also reset the Y position and I can't think of any reason to not do so other than it was a bit more programing that would have had to been done and it was a cost savings not to add this ability. It's not a glitch or a defect, it's just the way it was designed, obviously not the best design, but it is working as intended.

It's not a glitch, just a way of thinking. The cutter does not know when a new job is started, or when the last job is finished, it just does what the software tells it to. So when the cut is done and you send a new job to the machine, the first thing that job does is tell the cutter to return to the home position. It would be possible to have software designed so that it uses relative distances rather than absolute which would then allow you to send job after job with out telling the cutter to reset the origin. Another option would be to have a cutter/software combo smart enough that the software sends a job finished command to the cutter and the cutter then resets it's origin automatically. The easiest way for the people making the software/building the hardware though is to just have user hit the reset button.

Figuring out what the font types are and recreating the logo would be the ideal way to go, of maybe ask if they have the original files of the logo that are probably already in vector format.

Can you post a photo of the results, and a copy of the file used to cut?

he he, slow blow.

You sure about that? You can download the flash plug-in directly from Mozilla's support web page. I am seeing online where FireFox disabled it by default a few years ago, but you can still enable it through the Add-ons Manager.

So did you use the auto trace function in inkscape? As Primal did, finding the font and recreating it is the ideal way to go. Second option would be to manually trace it all. The letters in this case are pretty basic and a manual trace using the bezier tool should give good results.

Do a search on here about setting blade depth, tons of post about how to do it. Read through those and get the blade set right. If your blade was too far out you may have damaged the tip and are not getting a clean of a cut as you should so you might try putting a new blade in and go through the depth setting procedure again. I have a low end machine and getting the blade set right makes all the difference in the world.

While that design is not the easiest, it shouldn't be too hard and with the amount of trouble you're having I would suspect you don't have your blade depth, and/or pressure set exact enough. Going back and adding in some cut lines could help a great deal as well. A cut line where the steam of the leaves would be would help quite a bit I think.

You peel the transfer tape off with the vinyl still on the backing paper? How do you do that with out pulling the vinyl up and making a total mess? Typically one would start with the top layer and work down, never separating the vinyl from the application tape.